The neighbor kids come over, insisting that we watch a movie with them. We dig around, knowing that they have all but exhausted the stack of old James Bond movies from my personal collection, or at least they have fast-forwarded to the good parts: the empty space suits that explode for no reason in deep space laser fights, underwater car chases and harpoon battles, boat stunts, alligators fed by a man with a fake hook over his real arm, you know, the awesome basics of action movies since the beginning of time.

But lo! What have we here? The Indiana Jones Trilogy! A great gift, and certainly something to keep a couple of action deprived kids content for an hour and a half.

Ten minutes into "Raiders of the Lost Ark," one of them looks at me and asks, "Just how old is this movie?"

"Why? Does it seem dated?"

I look at the box and nearly choke on my popcorn. 1981. Holy crap. This movie, such a basic tenant of my childhood, is now 25 years old.

Amid clamorings that we are trying to bore them out of our house, Chris lets the room hear his thought; that all must sit still and be quiet or leave the area.

Things are quiet again for a while, and the dreaded storyline develops.

"Are there going to be any more snakes?"

"This isn't like the video game at all."

When, finally, the infamous face-melting scene is imminent, Chris gets everyone to settle down and watch by telling us that it scared the crap out of him when he was their age. I second that, and wait to be disgusted.

It lasts all of 9 seconds, and when it is over, one of the kids says: "That was so fakey."

I have officially become an unhip old person, clinging to the scraps of my quickly rotting youth, unable to impress even the children from next door who like my cookies, the fact that I have purple hair nonwithstanding.

Too much humanity, not enough punching. I need to get on board, is the consensus.

After the kids left for more exciting activities, Chris and I talked about other movies that scared us silly when we were 10. Embarrassingly, Superman 3 would make my list, although I can't remember why, only that when the bad guy gets it in the end, he gets it in such a dramatic way that it gave me nightmares. Also, that movie with Tom Sellack called "Runaway" where robotic spiders would follow you around and inject you with a paralyzing agent and guns shot bullets that could follow you around corners and would explode on impact. I must have entered every dark room like a veteran undercover cop for 3 months after that, not absorbing the absurdity of the notion that futuristic killer spider robots would want to kill a 10 year old girl in a trailer in rural Minnesota.

It was an irrational fear.

We are waiting for bacon to be delivered to our table. I am sipping a too-spicy Virgin Mary that I hope will clear out my pollen-irritated sinus cavity.

Chris is talking about something important, his music perhaps, it escapes me now, but I couldn't concentrate on anything he was saying because he had something stuck to his lower eyelash. I stared at it, thinking it must fall off the next time he blinks. But it didn't. It hung there, suspended above the rim of his glasses, bobbing with the weight of itself as he spoke.

Finally I say something.

"Hey, um, you've got a thing-" I make a swiping gesture at my own face to mirror the problem.

"What? Oh." He takes off his glasses, sets them on the table, where I can't help but think bacon will nest briefly in a few minutes, before being devoured by the two of us.

He rubs at his eye, and puts his glasses back on.

"Better?" he asks, then goes right back into whatever he was saying.

I still can't focus on it though, because now the offending particle has moved up to his top eyelash, where it looks to me like it will drop fiendishly into his eye at any moment, blinding him for life.

"So I just really think that my printing is going to take priority over music for a while, at least until-"

"I'm sorry, I have to tell you: the thing is still really close to your eye."

"Agh! Will you stop? Why can't we just have a conversation without you picking stuff off of me?"

I admit; I am highly distracted by foreign things attached to the faces of those I'm conversing with. I can't think of anything else until the thing/s are removed. It's a major flaw, as there's always something stuck to someone.

A friend just informed me the other night that the night her boyfriend came back to town after being away for a year, that the first thing she did was reach over, as he was speaking, and pick something out of his teeth. He didn't even miss a beat, just kept talking. How do we get to that point?

We are waiting for bacon to be delivered to our table. I am sipping a too-spicy Virgin Mary that I hope will clear out my pollen-irritated sinus cavity.

Chris is talking about something important, his music perhaps, it escapes me now, but I couldn't concentrate on anything he was saying because he had something stuck to his lower eyelash. I stared at it, thinking it must fall off the next time he blinks. But it didn't. It hung there, suspended above the rim of his glasses, bobbing with the weight of itself as he spoke.

Finally I say something.

"Hey, um, you've got a thing-" I make a swiping gesture at my own face to mirror the problem.

"What? Oh." He takes off his glasses, sets them on the table, where I can't help but think bacon will nest briefly in a few minutes, before being devoured by the two of us.

He rubs at his eye, and puts his glasses back on.

"Better?" he asks, then goes right back into whatever he was saying.

I still can't focus on it though, because now the offending particle has moved up to his top eyelash, where it looks to me like it will drop fiendishly into his eye at any moment, blinding him for life.

"So I just really think that my printing is going to take priority over music for a while, at least until-"

"I'm sorry, I have to tell you: the thing is still really close to your eye."

"Agh! Will you stop? Why can't we just have a conversation without you picking stuff off of me?"

I admit; I am highly distracted by foreign things attached to the faces of those I'm conversing with. I can't think of anything else until the thing/s are removed. It's a major flaw, as there's always something stuck to someone.

A friend just informed me the other night that the night her boyfriend came back to town after being away for a year, that the first thing she did was reach over, as he was speaking, and pick something out of his teeth. He didn't even miss a beat, just kept talking. How do we get to that point?

I was walking across the street with Eddy, severely underdressed, on our way to meet Luci et al for dancing hilarity. My heels were cute, sturdy, but flat, with no traction. These were not all terrain fashion statements.

So when a guy heading the other way, wearing eyeliner, looking cute as hell, says, "Hey, I love your coat!" and I turn and say "Thanks!" and try to look all runway model about it, the first thing to go is my footing.

I land sprawled on the asphalt, Eddy already ahead of me and standing on the curb, looking amused, with just the right amount of concern. I am mortified beyond any and all sense. This, for some reason, perhaps because I am no longer a teenager, goes well beyond the period stain on the back of the dress, the lipstick on not only the teeth, but the face.

Cute boy rushes back to me and says "Oh my God! Are you okay? You must need a hug."

I, still sitting on the ground trying to assess the glass absorption into my palms apologize for making him have to witness my flailing around like a clumsy ass.

He insists on helping me up and embracing me, his date furious on the opposite corner, while Eddy offers me an elbow when I catch up to him.

Now I understand why women hold onto the proffered arm.

A patron walked up to my desk and stood there, staring at the side of my head.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said back.

Then I noticed that he had drool running down his face and soaking into the first five inches of his shirt. He thrust a sweaty clutch of snapdragons at my face.

"These are for you."

"Um...Thanks." I accepted with hesitation, taking the bouquet with only two fingers and placing it gingerly on a piece of absorbent paper.

"What- do you think they're poisonous?" He seemed pretty upset that I hadn't clutched them to my bosom and swooned.

"Huh? No, I'm just putting them here for...later."

Mistake.

"Oh! Not poisonous!" he caterwauled, and snatched them back, bringing them to his mouth and taking a huge, crisp bite and chewing, somewhat messily, while smiling at me as though I had just given him permission to crap on the carpet.

"Sir, you might not wish to do that. In fact, you don't want to eat those. They might not be good for you." I had never encountered anything like this before. Usually the crazy people want to hurt you, not themselves. What was the protocol? I had no idea.

Luckily, the LA sitting next to me jumped up and reiterated my concerns, adding that she thought they might be poisonous.

She called the security officers while I Googled the possibility.

The man happily munched away on the snapdragons, pieces of petal falling from his wet face to land on his soppy shirt and behind him on the floor as he wandered in circles.

Security tried to talk to him and advise him to not down any more exotic plants, but he resisted their common sense advice, assuring them that he knew what he was doing by yelling "Not poisonous! Aphrodisiac!" before he stumbled away and out the door.

A later inspection of the snapdragon arrangement in the lobby confirmed that there was only one lonely stalk left, and that he could have been eating snapdragons all morning. But since he left without the chance to let us know if it was true, we can only speculate on the demise of the decoration.

I was in charge of the Chicken Kiev. The pre-formed, frozen kind; breaded and filled with yellow liquid that by all accounts looks buttery, but tastes strangely synthetic. Chris calls them chicken Twinkies. I was too tired to contemplate the amount of energy it would take to make mashed potatoes, so Chris was in charge of those.

I plunked the solid chunks of processed goodness down in the glass baking dish and walked away.

Chris busied himself with the chopping of the last of the potatoes, having to toss one in the trash when he discovered that part of it had liquified in the bag.

I decided at the last minute to put some frozen corn on a burner, because, well, when else would we eat frozen corn? Why do we even have it in the freezer? What purpose does it serve? But it was a good thing I did, because Chris happily finished the potatoes, announced that he may have put too much milk in them, and left the area.

I went over to investigate, and by checking out their texture, was able to discern that they wouldn't be great, but they wouldn't be too wierd. I stuck my finger in, hoping to be able to make a quick judgement about the possible addition of garlic or butter, but before I even put it in my mouth, I knew something was wrong.

They smelled. Bad.

I sort of hunkered down over the bowl and sniffed. The milk was sour. Not just slightly.

"Chris!" I yelled. "You used spoiled milk in the potatoes!"

He came running and looked at them in disbelief.

"Really?" He took a small bite. "Ooh. You're right."

"Chris, didn't you have cereal earlier today?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't notice the milk was bad then?"

"I guess not. I mean, I thought something was strange, but, I just didn't realize."

We flushed the potatoes and had frozen corn with our chicken Twinkies.

After dinner, Chris gathered all his clean clothes from the laundry area and dumped them on our bed for an enormous version of "The Matching Game."

I love this game, where you spread out all your clothes and separated them into piles, match socks, fold pants and t-shirts. It gives the a warm fuzzy feeling.

After we were left with a large number of orphaned socks, Chris went nuts, inspecting every article of clothing he owned and discarding an entire two garbage bags of socks without mates, t-shirts the color of rust or frayed to a translucent texture, pants covered in ink and paint, and shirts with less than 3 buttons.

It felt great.

A patron just informed me that if I ever wanted to talk about or express my interest in UFOs, I'd be put on a blacklist fo fast it wouldn't even be funny. Then she put her finger to her lips and made a shushing noise. She didn't want anyone to hear her warning me about it, or she'd be put on the list herself. She said she couldn't take off her sunglasses or she'd be recognized for sure. She has to wear them all the time, even in the house.

Some random guy tried to grab hold of me as I was shelving CDs today, a basic patron no-no.

I had been clenching my teeth about a kid listening to his headphones almost too loud. No one seemed to be bothered by him, and I couldn't tell if it was just because I happened to be totally in his personal space, as he wanted the pile of CDs in my hands, which you would have to pry from my cold, dead body before I would just give them up like that.

Then The Grabber laughed really loud, a staccato burst of insane sounding revelry and then nothing. I clenched my teeth together hard enough to hear enamel cracking and swung around to say something, but I didn't see anyone.

I started flipping through the classical section, orchestral, and suddenly an alien paw reached out from the other side of the shelf and made a swipe and my wrist.

I bent over a bit and peered through the opening. There was The Grabber, giggling to himself and wiggling his eyebrows at me. I gave him my best no-nonsense glare over the top of my glasses and pointed right at him, prepared to make a scene if he swatted at me again with anything resembling intention to yank my arm through the shelving.

But he reacted like a 2nd grader and hunched over, then scuttled away like a crab.

Then Headphone Guy started singing along, loud and proud.

I grabbed my truck and took off for the relative safety of the reference desk.

Jesus.

We were on the road at 7:15am on our day off together, driving through jungly traffic on the 205 to get to an 8o’clock appointment at our highly recommended accountant’s office.

I was sick. Something lodged in my sinus cavity the week before and was making my life miserable, breathing wise. Chris was cranky because he had to get up early to go do our taxes, which is reason enough to be in a bad mood.

I was swearing and clutching my forehead in the stop and go lurch of rush hour. There were no signs of an accident or anything that indicated that the road would be freeing up any time soon.

We pulled up to the building at 7:58 and I grinned at Chris.

“Isn’t it amazing? We made it here on time after all.” He looked at me the way a cat looks at a spider before batting it across the floor.

“Yeah, that’s great.”

I turned to pick up the enormous stack of papers needed to itemize our deductions. They weren’t on the back seat. I looked at my bag. They weren’t sticking out the top of that either. I looked at the floor, at Chris’ lap, in my own lap. The papers were not in the vicinity.

I freaked out.

“Oh SHIT! We just drove almost an HOUR to get here early on our DAY OFF and I LEFT THE PAPERS on the KITCHEN TABLE!” My initial outburst was followed by some choice bits of self-criticism, as well as some stuff thrown in the direction of my car mate, who decided to tell me that flipping out and yelling wasn’t going to make the papers magically appear.

We both stormed away from the car. Chris took off down the street with no hat or gloves, even though the morning was brisk enough to have caused a quarter inch frost on everything, and me into the CPA office, trying to pull it together so as to not start blubbering in the presence of people who were going to decide how big my return was.

It was easy to reschedule the appointment, and the woman only stared briefly at my purple hair. I was still pissed about pulling such a bonehead move though, that when I got back out to the car and Chris hadn’t materialized, I figured that if he wanted to walk, that was fine with me, and started to pull out of the parking lot.

Then I envisioned him 45 minutes from home in a completely unfamiliar part of town with no warm clothes and possibly no wallet, and decided to turn my hazard lights on and give him five minutes to show up. I saw him coming towards the car with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears. For some reason, this didn’t elevate my mood, and I glared at him as he opened his door and fell sighing into his seat.

We had planned on going out for pancakes to celebrate the end of the dreaded tax errand, but now that was in the toilet, as the errand was still looming on the calendar, and now we were just two pissed off people up at an uncivilized hour for basically no reason. I figured we’d just go straight home so we could get on with avoiding each other all day.

Half way through the longest car ride ever, I pulled impulsively into a gas station when I saw that they had a price of under $2/gallon. A guy breezed by and said, fill on a card? To which I said $20 cash, and he said, fill with cash, and then took off. I didn’t have any more than twenty and I tried to catch him, but I had no idea where he went, so I stomped into the store to try to reason it out with the woman inside.

‘Hi hon, I’ll be right there.” Her disembodied voice came floating out of a back room.

I gave a Halls cough drop display a full dose of my animosity with a glower.

“Just a fill up, hon?”

“Well, see, the thing is…”

She looked over her glasses at me, not unkindly.

“It’s cold enough out there to have put a frost on the pumpkin, am I right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Whatever.”

“You look like you’ve got some frost on your personal pumpkin, if you don’t mind me saying. You know what that needs? A vigorous rubbing. That’ll take care of it.” She glanced at her register. “That’ll be $21.”

I had no idea what she meant, but it was the funniest thing I had heard all day, and I launched into one of those coughing laughs where you grip the surface in front of you and spray spit all over. She let the extra dollar slide.

I stumbled, giggling, out to the car, and announced to Chris that I may have frost on my personal pumpkin. He agreed.

Then we went out for pancakes.

List to catch you up:

-We have termites. And carpenter ants. And no money.
-Portly can no longer shimmy under Chris' dresser as she is too chunky.
-My 30th birthday yeilded me a pink cake with Funfetti frosting, a Get Fuzzy Calendar, a killer unicorn, and lots of drinks.
-The ceiling in the garage is leaking above the dryer.
-I'm obsessed with Ranma 1/2. Mostly the show, but the books are good too. Teenage boys turning into girls and grown men turning into giant pandas seem to be 'my thing.'
-When I requested a clear acrylic ball for my labret piercing at the jewelry counter, the woman asked if it was for work. I said no, it was for my mom, and she gave me a look that could only be described as 'whithering.'
-My work area looks like a demilitarized zone.
-I washed the curtains in the living room after I opened them and was covered with a cascade of cat hair.
-The neighbor kid's biggest wish right now is that dinosaurs were still alive, didn't eat people(or stomp on them), and could be ridden to school.
-I'm paying someone to do my taxes this year. Fuck it.

One of Chris' fancy pens exploded in the dryer. He opened the door and found that half of his clothes were splotched by ink, black stains rubbed around the cylinder by the churning of the fabric. It's true that his shirts managed to spread the offending substance around the entire compartment. I felt along the smudges with the pad of my finger. To my relief and Chris' despair, it was all smeary.

"You know what this means?" I asked, excited that it wasn't as grim as it appeared, in terms of far reaching consequences for our future loads of laundry.

"Sitting in the freezing cold garage while scrubbing permanent ink out of the dryer?" he guessed, not nearly as thrilled as I was.

And so, what was initially thought of by me as the ruin of an expensive appliance turned out to be no more complicated to clean up than with a sponge and some sudsy water.

It was cold in the garage though. Portly kept him company while he scrubbed.

Stupid pen.

Everytime Chris moved last night, I woke up. Not just the sort of jostled out of deep sleep that is easily returned to by changing positions and getting my face out of the drool spot either. No. Everytime he sighed, or turned a page, or tried to fend off the cat, I came out of sleep like it was a cannon I was being shot out of. Several times I snorted, so quick was my desperate inhalation.

Then I'd start thinking about things that I only ever think about, at least in such a stark manner, at 3am. What is keeping me breathing? If I subconsciously told my lungs to stop doing it, maybe as a joke, would my brain comply anyway? What if I made myself stop breathing in my sleep, and then forgot how to get started again? Heavy stuff.

Clicking into more practical gears, my head went into asthma panic overdrive. All this thinking about breathing or not led me right into this: If I'm thinking so much about breathing and my abilities to continue to do so, is my body trying to send up the red flags that something is about to happen to hinder my abilities to continue with this activity? Like my own personal bronchial constriction breathing-lung dog? Oh, crap.

So I started to breathe very deliberately, checking for changes in raspiness and how deep each one was. And then every subtle variation meant a whole list of calamities; heart attack, pneumonia, emphysema, supernatural possession. Smothered by the spirit of the Lord. Going straight to hell for bringing up my sister's secret teenage oregano stash and the embarrasment my mom lived through when she busted Kristi on it, only to be confronted with the fact that it wasn't drugs at all, but just a container of spice. Shouldn't have tried to talk to her about that on the phone the other night. It's all coming back to suck the oxygen right out of my lungs now.

Chris moves again, tossing his book on the floor. It takes my alertness to the next level. Now I am convinced that while I am having a CO2 induced seizure that the house will be broken into and pillaged. Chris will be knocked out with his own bat while trying to call the police from his studio, and the cat will escape into the cold night, only to be eaten by the friendly neighborhood pit bull. And I, I will be trapped by my own inability to breathe, like a fish on a shag rug, and will not be able to stop the theives from making off with my clip art collection and my cheap ass DVD player that really doesn't work anymore.

And as long as they're at it, they might as well take the two ancient and malfunctioning reel to reel players that spark and make the lights flicker when they are plugged in. And that box of clothes I've been meaning to take to the Goodwill. And my jar of pennies, although I had to cash them in a few weeks ago to buy something that seemed important at the time, so there aren't that many to weigh them down. No, they'll be able to make a quick getaway.

But now Chris is fussing around with the blankets and all the noises I hear as crystal clear subside as I realize just how fucking cold it is in our house as the main quilt gets yanked off my shoulder. I wonder if I can see my breath. Our furnace is an electricity hog and the windows are not yet plasticized and the wonderful fans that keep our bathroom and kitchen smoke and steam free are like open portholes into frigid wind tunnels. They siphon the wind directly into those two rooms, making the fridge obsolete. We set the thermostat at 62 and wear our hats, scarves, and gloves. We build little fires in the fireplace and struggle to keep them going. I wonder why we haven't gone yet to the hardware store for puffy tape to put around the door leading into the garage. Payday sparkles in the distance, promising new ways to help us shore up our battlestation against the surprisingly crisp Portland winter. I make a mental wishlist for heatmaking/saving devices.

Portly is now off the bed, probably because her human companions aren't doing anything to help keep her still and asleep. She claws the chair in the next room, ripping sounds coming from the hallway.

"Does Portly have any Crunchies?" Chris mumbles, thinking an empty food dish might cause her to act out.

"She did when we went to bed."

"Maybe it's time to put her in the garage."

"But it's cold out there."

"..."

By the time 5am or so rolls around, Chris gives up and puts pants on, then goes to some other location to do god knows what. I try to drift off again, but feel the same steady pull of neurosis that kept waking me up to begin with. I dream about a nap. Maybe later, maybe later.

I spent years looking for the perfect coffee cup for work. Somthing that sealed completely so I could toss it in my bag, easily washable, small enough so that if my order wasn't heard I wouldn't walk out with a beverage big enough for a small horse.

I found it. It holds only 8 ounces, is the blue of the summer sky, and keeps my tea hot until it's time to go home.

One problem. I just discovered it. There is a small space between the rubber part of the lid that keeps the liquid in and the cool blue metal top, rounded like an unfired bullet.

Unbeknownst to me, chai has been collecting in this space for several weeks. I just thought to unscrew it to look in there 4 minutes ago, as I noticed what I was afraid was a leak. I am still fighting a serious gag reflex. Just looking at the thing makes me feel green.

And so the search for the perfect coffee cup continues...

My father is being forced into early retirement. He is vague about the details, and doesn't answer any questions he doesn't want to. "Forced" is his word. I imagine the state is tired of trying to find something for him to do, as he hasn't really had a permanent place since they shut down the print shop he ran years ago. We have no idea what he has been up to. We know that he likes Pier One and Barnes and Noble in the strip mall near his house in the suburbs.

My mom said she saw him driving the other day in town while she was waiting at a stop sign. She pulled out behind him, and as the distance she followed him turned into many blocks, she felt the rage and anger she thought she had cut loose threatening her judgment.

"It took every fiber of my being to keep from running him over."

"But wasn't he driving his truck? How could you run him over in his truck?"

"Oh, you weren't married to him or you'd know."

My poor parents, fueled by their mutual distain for each other, living lives in such close proximity. Do they choose this because of some deep rooted dependence on each other, no matter how twisted? Or is it something like they each think that the area was theirs first? They just both can't imagine living anywhere else?

Robert and I share a city, but it's a million people here vs 12000 there. It's easier to divide up a town if it has more than one fancy bar and one grocery store.

Oh, the horror of bumping into your exhusband when you look like crap and drove to the store in your pajamas because you were too sick to put real clothes on but you needed more canned chicken soup and maybe a few more movies. He's holding his flushed and cute little baby and gesturing to his new wife who has naturally red hair and the Norman Rockwell image is forever seared in your mind as The Thing You Could Not Do. The horror!

We were only married for two years, I can't imagine what it's like for my parents, married for longer than I've been alive.

I told my mom that she should excise the anger and rage in therapy, and she told me she doesn't want to talk about it in therapy because it's too painful. Either she doesn't grasp the idea of counselling or it really is worse than I can conjure up.

Graple. Grumble. Velour. These are words I like, on a completely unrelated note.

The man behind the counter asks me how thick I'd like my salami sliced, and I have no idea what the right answer is, so I grin like a dork and shrug, telling him to 'surprise me.'

He turns to the slicer and makes some minute adjustment, then turns back to me, holding out a seriously thick slice of lunchmeat.

"How's that?" he asks, and waves it at me over the counter, demonstrating its ability to withstand even the most powerful forces of gravity and remain upright.

"That's...uh, fine."

"No, no, you have to take it."

"Oh, okay." I accept the offering of sausage and take a step back. I'm wearing gloves, and little tufts of fur are sticking to the piece of meat. Do I eat it? Is that what he meant for me to do? I take a bite, although I am stuffed from the sushi I gorged on not 30 minutes before.

"Here," he says, handing me another slice. "This should be better."

I can't tell the difference. The second slice he hands me is essentially identical to the first, and I stand uncomfortable and silent as he small talks me through several more pieces.

What is the etiquette? This is why I never buy things from a counter where you have to try to explain and justify your selections to another person. So many opportunities for things to go wrong. Once, I asked for half a bag of lavender and received half a pound, which actually filled up almost 3 bags. I wondered what took the guy so long and why he gave me a weird look. Who would need that much lavender at once? Maybe to fill up an entire comforter?

So I'm still standing there, one glove dangling from my teeth, one hand full of thickly sliced salami, the smell of which is actually a bit too cloying for me at the moment.

The guy asks me if I 'know my salamis' and I squint at him. He asks me what the difference is between the two he's got in the case, and I guess that one is more tangy. I look to him to see if I guessed right. The slices in my hand are getting that warm meat slime. I will have to wash my gloves.

He hands me the bag of lunch meat and I turn away quickly and stuff the pieces I am holding inside, along with the chunks of fluff from my gloves. My hands are oily and smell like a cat treat.

I move on to the frozen juice section where I stoop down and wipe my fingers on the tops of my socks.

Was the meat counter guy messing with me? Or just trying to be nice? I guess I'll be buying my next round of sandwich items pre-packaged.

The large dragon on my back is partially inked in; vermilion and brick red. To color in his wings, head/neck, and arms took 2.5 hours. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.

Yes!

Worse than the day that piece of metal flew into my eye. Worse than cutting the tip of my thumb off on the band saw in Industrial Arts class in 8th grade while trying not to look stupid in front of my caveman classmates. Worse than planting my toddler-sized index finger directly on the heat plate of my dad's shop space heater. Worse than cramps before the advent of The Pill. Perhaps even more painful than flipping over the handlebars of a friend's bike while going over a homemade jump consisting of a sauce pan and a 2X4, although I think the humiliation factor added much to the throbbing of my spilt lip in that case. It was definitely more attention getting than the weak punch delivered to me by a fellow middle-schooler who claimed I "stole her man" when in fact I had never seen the gangly boy before she shoved his picture at me, grabbed my face and then pushed me over into the mud.

But I digress.

I hunched over a vinyl pillow while Matthew drilled ink into my spine, watching with disgust as sweat literally poured down my arms and pooled on the pillow. I bunched up paper towels to pad the absorbency factor. I must have sweated out a half-gallon.

The sound of the needle vibrating, which is something that normally sets the fringy hairs at the back of my neck on edge, although not in a bad way, made my stomach roll over. For the first time in many years, I felt myself wanting to turn around and punch Matthew in the face.

When he told me he was nearly finished, I got really excited."Really? You're done? That wasn't really so bad."

"Well, I'm just going to finish up his other arm here and then you'll have to come back for maybe one or two more sittings."

AAAHHH!

The whole next day, Chris kept patting me on the back. It made my inner rottweiler quite snarly. Now, a week later, it feels like a bad sunburn. I've been anticipating this as it means the super no-touch feeling will soon be gone.

However, I kept finding what looked like red fish food flakes in my underwear today, and it started to freak me out.

"Where the hell is this flaky stuff coming from?" I wondered aloud in a stall this morning, clearing the room in three seconds flat.

After a cool moment of panic, it hit me: The extra ink and dead skin are peeling and sliding down my back. Thank God! No, wait, that's gross. But thank God!

Underpants With Fish Flakes. Look for their new album to hit stores this fall!

I buy all my underwear in groups of maybe 10 to 15.

This works out alright during the first part of the life cycle of a pair of panties because, well, they're new. The elastic is stretchy, the microfiber feels smooth and unpilled, the tag still has all the information on it. Your pets don't take perverse pleasure in carting them around in their mouths. And no matter who you are or what size you wear, everyone feels hot in new underwear.

Even the second stage of life is okay, because here you develop your favorite pairs to go with certain clothes. Sort of a Superman costume under your boring work outfit. This is also where the wheat gets separated from the chaff. The cute polka dot pair that you thought might bring out the playful side of your significant other have been rejected with a smirk. You realize the pair with the alligator shouting "HAPPY TIME!" while reclining under a rainbow that you bought only for the novelty is actually the most flattering on your behind. Thank God those thongs you bought were all black! And what about the ones your sister held up to your head and said "Well, these say they're your size, but I'll be damned if you're going to be able to fit your whole ass in them." Ha! Not only do they fit, but they're actually too big.

The longest stretch in the life cycle of the panty herd is after the breaking in phase, when life returns to its non-new-panty plain-old day to day grind. You have some good days where all your clothes come together to make you look and feel like a rock star. Other days you choose poorly and end up feeling like your skirt and your panties have transformed into velcro. Your significant other has his/her favorite pairs, but no longer feels it necessary to take them off with his/her teeth.

And then, inevitably, comes the day when you pull on your old reliables, and the elastic no longer snaps reassuringly across your hip tattoos. They sag, they itch, the tag still haunts the small of your back even though you ripped it out months ago.

The weeding of the herd is always a sad day for me. I gather them together, freshly laundered for their final journey, and cut them into tiny pieces. This strategy came about after a friend discovered that her discarded underpants were being dug for by assailants unknown(possibly the dog, but who wants to take chances?) and spirited away or left in tatters on the lawn.

And lo! It was decided to wash and then destroy our loyal servants before disposing of them, so as not to be greeted with any ghastly, creepy, or slobbery sight upon leaving for work in the morning.

And thus ends the lesson for today.

I felt the old familiar pangs of chronic stomach problems on the bus this morning. Luckily, our bus was rerouted due to a shooting downtown and the ride lasted twice as long. And thank god I was one of the many standing unfortunates gripping enormous bags of stuff, hanging onto the bar until my arm started to feel the warning tingles of inadequate circulation.

Otherwise, I might have been able to sit down and curl around my churning stomach, cinch tight my buttocks, and pray that I didn’t finally get to experience anal leakage.

So as we were driving AWAY from our destination on a round-about detour, I recognized that the sort of discomfort coming from my protesting digestive system was its version of a fair warning before it flushed my system of the offending toxin.

I will admit, I have something of a *ahem* delicate constitution. Just glancing sidelong at a bowl of warm potato salad in the sun will give me a rumbly in my tumbly. I am the only person I know who can contract food-borne illnesses through osmosis. So my entire life has been built around keeping myself as stress, gore, and rotten-food free as possible. But sometimes things slip past my goalie. My team will never make the championship.

I tried to hunch over, but the gravity of my enormous bags and the physics of needing to hang on to the bar to keep from assaulting my fellow passengers kept me from succeeding.

My tummy gave another warning twist, and my brain reacted by covering my body with a clammy sweat. Take that!

The bus driver, god love him, was doing his best to keep his place by lurching forward five feet at a time, inching along with all the other irate commuters in the world’s longest conga line.

My traveling companions were deep in conversation about something that I couldn’t have given a flying fuck about, due to the fact that I was weighing out the worst-case scenarios.

I might have to get out at the next stop, or maybe just scream that I need to get off here and now, crawl to the sidewalk, take off my shoes, and just shit right there in front of that antique store. They don’t open until 10am, nobody on the bus would have to know, and I wouldn’t stain my shoes. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Luckily, once we turned to get on the bridge, our speed increased to 15 miles an hour, and my stress level dropped a notch. I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated my mantra: If you have to crap your pants in public, it won’t kill you. I was referring to myself in the second person, so it was working already.

The second someone gave up their seat, I flung myself in it and felt a bit more in control. We did loops around downtown, attempting to get back on our route. All the damn one-way streets mocking me!

My companions were adjusting their belongings, still conversing cheerfully, talking about the large coffee beverages they were going to purchase. Ugh! The acidity! My stomach protested the mere idea of that black swill, normally so welcome in my daily routine, by traveling up into the back of my throat.

That did it. I reached for the bell, stamped to the door, and snapped something at my friends. My brain was in survival mode and became hostile to anything or anyone keeping me from my economy sized bottle of Pepto Bismal stashed in my locker.

I took it in my arms like a lost child and sat in the break room, snuggled around it, drinking freely. As the red-hot forks loose in my belly morphed into cool spoons, rubber balls, and finally, sugar lumps dissolving, I apologized to my friends and told them to be thankful that they hadn’t had to witness me crapping on the sidewalk while holding my shoes in my teeth.

I don't have any idea what color my car is under the filth that covers it.

The man directing traffic at the do-it-yourself car wash gave me a lesson on how to wash my car properly. But let me say that I was aware that I was 'doing it wrong.

"Lemme put a dollar in there for you and show you. See, what you've got to do here is start with the tire wash. You hold the sprayer until it turns green. A really bright green. In fact, you may want to consider it as a hair color."

Ha!

"So then you soak your tires real good. You let them sit just like that there. Then you wet down the rest of your car. The way you were doing it was no good."

I only had two dollars and was scrubbing away at a few sticky spots with the foam brush.

"Now you can use the brush, and look here, you've got a minute more than when you started."

I thanked him and he drifted over to the vacuum hoses where he started demonstrating the massive suction power of the unit to a tightly-pantsed couple in their early twenties. The girl chewed her gum and did her best to look bored. The boy(scary wisp mustache!) seemed completely emasculated by this stranger telling him how to best suck up any unwanted particles from the floor of his monster truck.

I sprayed on.

My wheels were still grubby and I didn't spend enough time scraping the multiple layers of grime off the roof of my car to make a bit of difference. And it turns out that all the nasty stuff I thought was on the outside of the windows was actually old dog slobber.

Next time, I'll wash my car in my driveway with a putty knife and a strong acetone solution. Maybe some sandpaper.

I walk into the house, arms around sacks of groceries, keys gripped in my teeth, bag sliding down my shoulder. I shuffle to the kitchen table and release the keys. They clatter off and hit the floor, trailing drool. Portly sniffs them nonchalantly from her sprawled out position in the middle of the floor, her cat disinterest fully engaged. She is not going to help me. She's just hoping I forget to close the door all the way so she can make her break for freedom. We keep telling her this is a bad idea, but like a teenager who knows it all, she thinks that the world outside is made of nothing but open cans of tuna and still-wet bathtubs for her to roll in and lick dry.

I look around for a human who might give me a hand with the numerous paper sacks full of discount edibles. He is standing in the bathroom, leaning over the sink.

"Hello?" I yell as I head back out the door for another load of bulk flour, sugar, and vanilla flavored granola. I hear him make a noise, but not one that sounds like enthusiasm.

I fumble with the bags as Portly tries to sneak past me.

"Ha! Not on my watch. Back varmint!" I lean into the door frame and weasel around her, a pouting mound of fur.

"Didn't you hear me? I'm home. With many bags. Can I get a hand?" I walk into the bathroom and recoil.

The place, to quote my sister, looks like a crime scene. There are bloody wads of toilet paper and cotton balls all over the sink. Chris is holding his hand and swabbing up blood as it swells out of a deep puncture wound in the meat of his palm. The sink has little splashes of gore in the bowl.

"Jeezus, what happened to you?" I say, and instinctively reach for his hand to assess the damage.

"Do we have any big band-aids? All I could find were these little ones."

"You mean like gauze and some medical tape? Sorry. Now, what happened?"

Trying to talk around me while I keep expressing my sincere belief that he should get stitches, I mean, GOD!- he told me that he had been carving away at a block print while holding it down, when he had suddenly relearned an important lesson about cutting away from himself.

I carried in the rest of the groceries by myself. Chris finally got the bleeding under control without the aid of stitches. Portly made another attempt to escape the torturous confines of our house but did not succeed.

But the main thing is that we all take a moment to really think about the object lesson: Always cut away from yourself, or your girlfriend will pressure you to go to the emergency room, where the wait will be unbearable and you will lose precious hours of your life, never to return again. Here ends the lesson for today.

Oh yeah, and get grocery bags with handles. Handles are the way to go.